Florida Marlins home struggles continue in loss to Cardinals

Defeat drops record below .500 again, 24-33 at home for season

Infante breaks finger

MIAMI GARDENS — The Marlins spent more than a month climbing out of the hole they dug in June.

They won 20 of 30 games to reach the goal manager Jack McKeon set of returning to .500. Before opening a four-game series with the Cardinals on Thursday, McKeon set a new objective.

"The immediate goal is to stay over .500 and start moving north. Hopefully we can play the same type of ball we've been playing the last couple weeks," McKeon said.

That may be more readily attainable if they could play the remainder of the season away from Sun Life Stadium. Coming off a 6-2 trip, they opened a 10-game homestand with the sort of subpar performance too often seen at home this season. The 7-4 defeat to the Cardinals dropped the Marlins below .500 again and left them 24-33 in the Unfriendly Confines; they're 31-23 away.

More costly was the loss of their hottest hitter, Omar Infante, with a fractured middle finger on his throwing hand on a freak play while diving for a ground ball.

Marlins starter Clay Hensley (1-4) lasted only 2 1/3 innings in a dreadful outing in which he gave up six runs on three hits. He walked three and hit two batters while throwing only 28 of 59 pitches for strikes.

"I didn't have any idea where the ball was going tonight. It was hands down the worst that I've ever pitched in my entire career," said Hensley, punctuating his assessment with expletives. "I'm frustrated also because we hit the ball well tonight, and I didn't set the tone for our team to get in the position to win."

The three-run homer Hensley gave up to Matt Holliday, the fourth batter of the game, was reminiscent of the Marlins' last homestand when they allowed multiple first-inning runs in four consecutive losses to the Padres and Mets.

This time they answered quickly with three runs on their own in the bottom of the inning. Emilio Bonifacio and Omar Infante opened with back-to-back doubles and Logan Morrison drove in two runs with a double to deep center. It took a half-hour and 71 pitches by Hensley and Cardinals starter Kyle Lohse to complete the interminable opening frame.

Hensley imploded in an ugly third inning in which he hit Holliday on the left elbow and then, with the bases loaded, nailed David Freese in the helmet with a 3-2 fastball. Freese stayed down for a few minutes before leaving the game. He had a mild concussion and bruise, the Cardinals said.

Hensley said he called Freese in the Cardinals clubhouse to apologize.

"I'm glad that Freese is OK, and hopefully he's not going to be out too long. He was very pleased that I called," Hensley said. "I think he knows that it wasn't intentional. For one to get away from me that bad, it's completely unacceptable.

"It's just frustrating because the lack of control I had tonight could have seriously hurt somebody."

It was uncharacteristic. Hensley had only hit nine batters in 430 2/3 innings before Thursday.

Hensley departed along with Freese in favor of reliever Burke Badenhop, who gave up a strange two-run double to Skip Schumaker off the bare hand of diving second baseman Infante. It was a play Infante often makes, diving to his left. Infante, who had doubles in his first two at-bats, had a hard single in the fourth, then exited after the fifth.

The Marlins chased Lohse after three innings and hit five doubles in the game. But two double plays helped prevent them from cutting into the Cardinals' lead, which grew with Albert Pujols' 25th home run off Badenhop in the fourth.